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Biographical Information.
  • Birth: December 10,1830 Death:May 15,1886
  • Geographic area of influence-Conneticut/New England
  • Family information- Unmarried
  • Applicable education / careers- Studied botany
  • Authors / poets of influence-William Wordsworth, Lydia Maria Child, Henry wodsworth Longfellow, Charlotte Bronte, William Shakespear
  • Unique characteristics of works- extensive use of dashes, unconventional capitalization
  • Influence / Focus of works -Flowers & Gardens, The master poems, morbitiy, gospel poems, undiscovered continent
  • Additional information- Studied Botany, never maried, liked to bake and garden

Famous Works
Because I could not stop for death
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

I cannot live with you
I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf
The sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,Like a cup
Discarded of the housewife,
Quaint or broken;
A newer Sevres pleases,
Old ones crack.
I could not die with you,
For one must wait
To shut the other's gaze down,
You could not.
And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death's privilege?
Nor could I rise with you,
Because your face
Would put out Jesus'.
That new grace
Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer by.
They'd judge us - how?
For you served Heaven, you know
Or sought to;
I could not,
Because you saturated sight,
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise.
And were you lost, I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.
And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.
So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale svustenance,
Despair!

AN ALTERED LOOK ABOUT THE HILLS
by: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
external image a_pic.gifN altered look about the hills; A Tyrian light the village fills; A wider sunrise in the dawn; A deeper twilight on the lawn; A print of a vermilion foot; A purple finger on the slope; A flippant fly upon the pane; A spider at his trade again; An added strut in chanticleer; A flower expected everywhere; An axe shrill singing in the woods; Fern-odors on untravelled roads,-- All this, and more I cannot tell, A furtive look you know as well, And Nicodemus' mystery Receives its annual reply.




Part C: Figurative Language


Part D: Meaning